Gazette Daily News Briefing, June 10 and June 11
Welcome to the weekend!
This is Stephen Colbert from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for Saturday, June 10th, and Sunday, June 11th, 2023.
According to the National Weather Service, Saturday will be Partly sunny, with a high near 82. There’ll be a 50% chance of rain, particularly after 4pm, including a chance of thunderstorms, increasing to a chance of 80 percent in the evening. Saturday night will have a low of 60.
Sunday there’s a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1pm with a chance of thunderstorms before 10am. After that it’ll be partly sunny, with a high near 74 with a low of 49 Sunday evening.
Iowa could pay millions more than budgeted to help families pay for private school
Hundreds more Iowans than anticipated have applied for a new state-funded private school financial assistance program. More than 15,500 applications had been submitted for the state's new education savings account program to receive thousands of dollars to pay their students' private school costs, according to the Iowa Department of Education.
And Iowans have more than 20 days left yet to apply.
While lawmakers set aside more than $107 million for the program in its first year, as with public school funding, “the appropriation from the Legislature is a standing unlimited appropriation,” said Heather Doe, communications director for the Iowa Department of Education.
“All approved ESAs will be funded,” Doe responded in an email.
She did not respond Friday to a follow up message asking how the state would pay for additional scholarships beyond what lawmakers had budgeted and where those dollars would come from.
Ahead of 2008 Iowa flood anniversary, Hinson introduces flood mitigation bill
Ahead of the 15-year anniversary of the historic 2008 flood, Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, of Marion, introduced a bipartisan bill to improve flood and drought mitigation through existing federal conservation programs.
Introduced along with Democratic Illinois U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, of Moline, the bill seeks to provide communities with resources to protect against flooding, by amending the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program to support practices that mitigate the effect of flooding and drought, or improve and expand flood resiliency.
Hinson said elevating flooding as a natural resource concern within RCCP ensures flood mitigation, prevention and resiliency become a long-term priority for the program in helping communities secure resources protect themselves from flooding.
Cedar Rapids-based task force responded to Davenport building collapse
The emergency response to a Davenport apartment building that collapsed May 28 — killing three and injuring several others — involved specially trained members of Iowa Task Force 1 from Cedar Rapids and Sioux City.
The Cedar Rapids task force was called a couple of hours after the collapse, which happened around 5 p.m. Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend. The team, trained in search and rescue techniques, arrived in Davenport at midnight.
Though the team returned to Cedar Rapids soon afterward, it was called back to assist in the search for and then recovery of bodies this past weekend, according to Rick Halleran, a Cedar Rapids firefighter and battalion chief of the Cedar Rapids task force.
The building’s collapse was “such a horrible, tragic event,” he said. “On the backside of it, it (the task force) operated as designed. There are always things to improve upon and do different next time, but the amount of cooperation on multiple levels with different agencies, groups and people at different levels, was really good.”
Have a good weekend, everyone.
